


rocket man (and i think it's going to be a long, long time)

by singtome



Category: The Maze Runner (Movies), The Maze Runner Series - James Dashner
Genre: Alternate Universe - Road Trip, Alternate Universe - Space, Eventual Fluff, Fluff and Angst, M/M, Miscommunication, Space au but with a twist, Star Crossed Lover Syndrome, dumb boyfriends who deserve each other, the twist is they're also magical
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-12-06
Updated: 2020-12-06
Packaged: 2021-03-09 22:00:20
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,991
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/27913417
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/singtome/pseuds/singtome
Summary: Sound travels through the infinite void of space in a faint whisper that only a cat, or a dog, or maybe even a small bird could hear, but definitely not a human. Maybe a druid, but that depended on their mood, or a mage of some kind, if they were lucky. Also depending on their mood.On the Glade, sound usually passed through the metal walls in irritable shout ofNEWT!repeatedly, sometimes multiple times a day, until the word lost all meaning.
Relationships: Newt/Thomas (Maze Runner)
Comments: 11
Kudos: 31
Collections: Maze Runner Secret Santa 2020





	rocket man (and i think it's going to be a long, long time)

**Author's Note:**

  * For [Tattered_Dreams](https://archiveofourown.org/users/Tattered_Dreams/gifts).



> Well. Here we are. Another year, another secret santa. 
> 
> To Rach - I really hope you enjoy reading your gift! I certainly enjoyed writing it. you asked for a futuristic road trip AU with a spaceship and hijinks, and I really hope I've delivered on that. 
> 
> You are a gem and I hope you had the very best christmas and the happiest of new years!

If a tree fell in the vast expanse of space, and there was no one around to hear it, would it make a sound?

Of course not, because there are no trees in space.

Sound travels through the infinite void in a faint whisper that only a cat, or a dog, or maybe even a small bird could hear, but definitely not a human. Maybe a druid, but that sometimes depended on their mood, or a mage of some kind, if they were lucky. Also depending on their mood.

On the Glade, sound usually passed through the metal walls in irritable shout of _NEWT!_ repeatedly, sometimes multiple times a day, until the word lost all meaning. 

The word is a name, and the name belongs to a young man who, at the time when the call of his name took a left turn at the dining hall and bounced the rest of the way down the tight hallway to reach him, was hanging upside down. For good reason – he didn’t like to spend his free time like this – but Gally was otherwise pre-occupied in the den, nursing a heartbroken Ben out of a drunken depressive episode with – and the kicker – _more_ alcohol, so someone had to make sure the ship didn’t fall apart beneath their feet.

If the Glade did ever fall, there is no doubt that it would make every effort possible to ensure it was heard, loud and clear, by everything in the star system that it was currently gracing with its presence. 

By the time the upside-down shadow of his best friend appears in his line of sight, following the cries of, _“Newt! Nooooooooooooooooot!”_ Newt had half a mind to swing himself up deeper into the underbelly of the ship and Glamour himself to fit in with the nuts and bolts. 

He doesn’t do that. He figures waiting just until the right moment to release a latch of the harness that would send him swinging down into Minho’s face as he walked into the engineering bay, would be far more satisfying.

And it is.

Minho gives a shout of fright and leaps backwards as Newt swings, self-satisfyingly, before him. He watches as Minho’s feet do a short tap-dance routine, arms jutting out and grasping for purchase against the netting that hangs from the roof of the cavern. “The fuck?” his friend swears, passionately, clutching his gasping chest. His expression shifts between in anger and something long-suffering that lingers still from their Academy days. “I’ve been calling you.”

“I heard,” Newt says, unconcerned. “How can I help you?”

Minho looks miffed. Newt may not have Thomas’ telepathic talent of reading the emotional tint of one’s aura, but he also doesn’t need glasses to see words on a page two inches from his nose, so. “Well, it’s actually not you I’m looking for,” Minho says.

“Oh?”

Wiping oil on his pants, Minho asks, “Have you seen Thomas around anywhere?”

_Speaking of …_

“Oh.” Newt swings his legs and jumps down, landing square of his feet as effortlessly as a cat. Pushing the goggles up to the top of his head, he says, “No, I haven’t.”

The tone of his voice must be telling enough, given the way Minho’s expression melts from long-suffering to downlight exasperated.

“Seriously?” he asks, “You guys are still fighting? Hasn’t it been, like, two weeks?”

Newt replies, “Thirteen days,” without a grace of hesitation, and earns a quirked eyebrow from Minho. He instantly casts a faint Glamour over his cheeks, just to hide the telling flush that rises beneath his skin. The one that begins as a faint tickle in his ears and finishes at the tips of his golden hair.

“Anyway,” Minho says, no doubt noticing the Glamour but choosing not to comment, or just not caring, “Doesn’t matter. I need you to find him. We’re getting ready to leave soon, and I want to make sure he knows to shut his –”

“Ready to leave for where?” Newt asks, innocently enough, but _Oh boy_.

“Do you,” Minho begins, tips of his ears turning red (if he isn’t careful they might begin to smoke, and then they’ll have another incident, like before, with one pissed off Co-Captain melting down a piece of vital equipment, and one Brenda-Captain ready to throw them all out of the airlock), “listen when I talk, or is it just,” he waves a hand vaguely beside his ear, “radio static?”

“Um. The second option?” Newt admits, wincing at the stab of shame and the look of disappointment painted across Minho’s face. Selective hearing. A blessing and a curse. Newt snaps his fingers. Some left over dustings of Glamour spark at his fingertips. “No, I remember. Gally’s birthday.”

“Yes, good.”

“Sadeia?”

“Ten points,” Minho congratulates with a sarcastic edge to his voice. “We’ll be stopping off in a few places along the way so he doesn’t get suspicious. Now, go and find your boy and make sure he keeps his trap shut, alright? If any of this gets back to Gally I’ll come for your head.”

Newt evaluates Minho for a moment – the rigid hold of his shoulders and the tightness in his jaw, and the way he is rocking, only subtly, from foot to foot – and concludes, “You’re nervous.”

Minho squawks, offended, and points a threatening finger in Newt’s face. “Wash your fuckin’ mouth out. And go. Get out of my sight.”

“Yeah, yeah,” Newt sighs, and strolls out of the room.

Thomas surely couldn’t have gone far. 

-

Teresa’s door frame is embellished with live flowers and vines because there is nothing that Druids, like her brother, or hedge witches, like herself, enjoy more than flourishing their abilities at every given moment. Nevertheless, Teresa is unmistakeably talented, and the purple irises and black dahlias that she has chosen for today are Newt’s favourites.

He knocks on her door once and is welcomed in with the causal chime of her voice on the other side, and Newt pokes his head into the door to find her, as usual, in deep trance. Her eyes don’t change colour like her brother’s do (genetic variant, extremely rare, once or twice in the gene pool type of thing) but when she is in enchantment, if you look closely enough, Teresa’s waist length black hair will take on a faint blue sheen.

Her hands pose loosely in the air before her, fingers splayed in a way that shows off her glittery nails (painted three weeks ago by Sonya, holding up by incantation) that sparkle almost obnoxiously brighter than the galaxy they are currently circling. Spinning in the space between Newt and Teresa, cross-legged on her bed, is a small book, a glass menagerie of three birds, and a white everlast flower. One of the birds – a galepike, seen on their last trip to Galmeria, and a baby hypnos, like the one that Minho scared Beth shitless with last star system, knock into each other repeatedly on their orbit, while the third, another galepike, revolves around the flower.

It almost makes Newt want to ask.

He starts off with, “Good morning, how did you sleep?”

And Teresa responds with, “I’m attempting to make a children’s colouring book.”

“Oh. That’s sweet. Why?”

She shrugs.

“Is it working out?”

“We’ll see in approximately two more hours and seven minutes.”

She finally looks up – her broken gaze having absolutely no affect on the incantation, sending chills up Newt’s spine (when he was sixteen years old and got his first glimpse of Teresa’s power it was just enough for him to sit back and consider the possibility that maybe he _was_ attracted to girls after all. The confusion lasted a total of forty-five minutes.)

“I know you’re looking for Thomas.”

“Right, well.” Newt clears his throat, shifting his weight from one foot to the other, awkwardly.

(The confusion lasted a total of forty-five minutes because the amazing space witch that sits before him has a brother, who walked into the room with wild brown hair, scattered freckles, and glowing eyes. He was annoyed with something, as usual, and the colour of his eyes shone a burnt orange that reminded Newt of the sunsets back home.)

“He’s not here,” Teresa says.

“I didn’t think he would be.”

Teresa waits. Newt waits in response.

Teresa sighs. The _still?_ perches behind her deep blue eyes, which she rolls, and then says, “Last I saw him he and Sonya were preparing up a buggie for a trip somewhere.”

Newt frowns, asks “For what?” and realises this question is explicitly unanswerable. To sit and ask yourself _why Sonya does this_ or _what her motives for that are_ is to sit and contemplate until you slowly waste away to stardust. Her dragging Thomas with her on some insane quest is no surprise either. It’s been this way since the two of them met back at Alby’s academy – The Homestead: a Refuge for Wayward Witches – stealing him away to help her find some very specific herbs for a very specific spell she had been trying to cast. It eventually ended up with the brew exploding in Thomas’ face and singing half an eyebrow.

They’ve been best friends ever since. 

“How long ago was that?”

Teresa hums thoughtfully. The baby hypnos is now doing a 360 backflip in mid-air, circling the galepikes in a cross motion. The flower is blooming and the book is trembling somewhat, emitting gold and blue sparks.

“Yesterday at lunch, I think.”

Okay, so they shouldn’t be too far, Newt thinks, feeling a stab of irritation in his temple. Leave it up to Thomas and Sonya to find themselves distracted on some planet and forget the very simple task of Coming Back.

“Let me guess, you have to go get them?”

“Spot on,” Newt says, leaning against the desk with a sigh.

“Minho freaking out about Gally’s super-secret birthday present again?”

“Teresa, your mind continues to astound me.”

Teresa gives him an amused grin. When he was seventeen, he’d experienced what Alby pleasantly referred to as Late Magick Puberty, where it felt as if all the thoughts of everyone in the world was screaming inside his head all at once, with no hint of mercy. He had been two seconds away from pulling a mandrake root out from Harriet’s garden until its shrill cries burst his eardrums when Teresa did him a solid and knocked him out with a sleep spell for three days. When he woke the voices were not gone, but they were quieter.

They’ve been best friends ever since. 

“You have to admit,” Teresa says, “It’s pretty cute.”

The evolution of Minho’s crush grew from playground pig-tail pulling to blown out pining that made even Newt roll his eyes. The day the realisation hit that it was all mutual was an event in and of itself, and everyone was invited.

“Adorable,” Newt agrees.

He announces he is off to find his sister and idiot boyfriend, and wishes Teresa all the best with her book. She sends him a wink on his way out.

_

Thomas’ tracker has been turned off, for whatever reason, so Newt tries his sister. A baby blue dot appears immediately on screen – Sonya had insisted on the colour herself – and shows she is currently on a small exoplanet named Ogygia, spinning on the outer corner of the galaxy next door. Newt has never heard of it, but just the name sounds like somewhere Sonya would find herself lost in, and sets a course immediately.

The planet itself is not much to behold at first glance; a juggler’s toss of forest, ocean, and desert. The desert portion seems to be the only section with living inhabitants, interestingly enough, and consists entirely of a very small city the size of three Glades combined. The native species is humanoid, a little shorter than the average height, and their skin tints a quirky green, blue or orange. Old stone buildings and fountains scatter around of the city.

“What are you up to?” Newt asks his sister, who cannot hear him, and quickly looks for a place to land.

The main strip runs from one end of the city to the other, where citizens mill around chatting, working, or shopping, most carrying clay pots in their arms. Newt is smiled at and greeted by at least ten of them before he steps in front of a motion censor and a very large hologram of a face erupts in his field of vision, stretching twenty feet up in the air.

The face has long white hair, pale skin and pale eyes, two where you would usually expect to find eyes, and one on the forehead below a golden laurel that sits above pointed ears. Below the lovely heart shaped chin and long neck are the words _Elizabeth of Avalon_. _Praise be the High Priestess!_

The face also belongs, unmistakeably, to his sister.

“Are you fucking serious?” Newt whispers furiously to himself, watching as a handful of locals bow on their way past the hologram. With a snap of his fingers, Newt casts a Glamour over himself, and strolls into the temple at the end of the strip with white robes that fall to his ankles, lighter hair not dissimilar to his sister’s new look, an earring that swings by his neck, and a faint shimmer around the eyes.

(The look is based entirely on a character from a show he and Minho used to watch: _Across the Milky Way._ He hopes no one notices.)

A small man with skin the colour of ripe mangos greets him at the door, and Newt announces deftly that he has an audience with the high priestess, and that she is expecting him. The people take one look at his six-foot frame, clothes, and hair and don’t question it one bit, and Newt is formally ushered into a large amphitheatre with a domed roof, and a stream that runs through the centre of the mosaic tiled floor all the way to a throne that sits on top of a pillar.

Sonya sits on top of that throne. Newt would recognise her annoying voice anywhere, regardless of the ankle length, floating white hair, and three eyes. She has Glamoured herself something fierce – it was always her strong suit, and Alby was always impressed. That, and aura spotting. For a solid month she would address everyone only by their Pantone shade.

The tall double doors close behind him and Newt allows the Glamour to drop only somewhat – he loses some sheen in his hair, and a couple rings – and Harriet is the first to see him. She stands off to the side in a long blue gown that accentuates her strong shoulders, and gives Newt a sheepish _Oh Shit_ grin. The Grin says _This was totally her idea_ and it also says _Literally what did you expect though_? and you know what? She’s right. 

Above their heads, Sonya is speaking, her voice airy and layered, like there is three of her; “Come closer, my child, the fortunes are shining brightly down upon you today.”

“Is that what we’re calling it now?” Newt says.

The air shifts, and Sonya opens her eyes – the real ones – and looks down. The Glamour she’s pulled over herself shifts at the sight of him, like it is sighing in relief. Break time.

“Oh,” she says, “It’s you.”

“What the fuck, Sonya?”

“I’ll leave you two alone,” Harriet says, backing quickly out of the room.

“Do you like it?” Sonya asks.

“Do I _like_ it?” Newt scoffs. “Are you being serious right now?”

She shrugs. “Personally, I think it’s my best work yet.”

If Newt wasn’t so pissed off he’d be partial to agree. The stunt, while extreme, has a very Sonya flourish to it. It also isn’t the first time she’s tried something like this on. His little sister has made a bit of a name for herself on the con artist scene. 

Newt asks, “Okay, but what did these poor gullible dickheads do to deserve this? You know what, don’t worry about it. I’m sure I’m not in the mood to hear whatever answer you’re about to give me,” he says, I’m looking for Thomas.”

Sonya looks confused; the frowning, head tilting kind of confusion. “Why are you looking for Thomas? I thought you guys broke up?”

Newt is beginning to wonder if he’s been caught up in some ruse and everyone back on the Glade is seated around a big screen, laughing at him.

“Why,” he says, “would you think we’ve broken up?”

“Well! You were fighting for, like, ever, and I hadn’t heard anything in a while. So I just assumed it was over.”

“Sonya, if we broke up you would be the first to know.”

“Really?” She coos.

Newt pinches the bridge of his nose. His Glamour has all but fizzled down to the bare essentials, and Sonya’s has dropped as well. He has clearly frazzled her, and her hair has lost half its length, although the colour is still white, and her third eye is missing.

“Sonya. Where. Is. He?”

Sonya says, “I left him on Ciuphus,” because, well, of-fucking-course she would say that.

The earring blinks away. “You left my boyfriend on Ciuphus?”

Sonya’s dress turns a less ethereal shade of periwinkle. “I thought you broke up!”

The floor length robe disappears, and Newt is let back in his regular jeans and shirt. “Why did you _leave_ him?”

“He wouldn’t stop singing show tunes in the buggie so I got annoyed and flew off when he got out to check out some cool rock, or whatever. Then we landed here and I guess I just forgot to go back and get him?”

“And how long ago was that?”

“About four days ago.”

“You’ve only been gone since yesterday!”

“Time runs different here!”

Newt groans, wanting to pull his hair out. “Which side?” he asks.

“The east,” Sonya admits, a bit shamefully.

“Thug central. Fantastic.”

Sonya waves a hand. “I’m sure he’s fine, you worry too much.”

Newt makes a face at her. “You would say that, those are your people.”

Newt turns and walks out of the temple while she is still shouting profanities at his back, none of them disagreeing, however.

-

The surface area of Ciuphus resembles a second-grade diorama project that was awarded a C+.

By far not the prettiest, but just enough sandy hills, nice large rocks and an oasis or two to earn some merit. Where it gains points in those areas it loses them in the shanty village named Serpentine on the western side of the planet, where if you were looking to get robbed but just, like, casually, maybe a watch, a necklace, or an earring of two, you have come to the right place. For the average temperature of Ciuphus is, on agreeance amongst everyone who lands upon it, far too fucking hot to try for anything more. By the time your average pick-pocketer has nabbed themselves a nice twinkly trinket or the like, the sun has beaten down on them far too long, and it’s time to turn into the pub for a well eared drink.

The twinkly trinket is used as currency, of course, and Newt – on the few troubling times he has spared on Ciuphus – has never seen anyone exchange actual established currency.

With the tracker down, still for whatever reason, although Newt is beginning to believe Thomas may have turned it off out of spite, or just to be a pain, or it has been exchanged over the counter for a subpar pint of beer, he is resigned to finding Thomas the old-fashioned way.

It doesn’t take long: the thoughts of most of the patrons that mill about Serpentine have one thing on their mind, and that is gold. Or jewels. Or sex. Or modest criminality. Or a nice shiny new vehicle. Or less than modest criminality. Or –

You get the idea.

Thomas has none of those things on his mind, thank goodness, and it is the sharp mantra of internal cursing to higher beings and everyone around him that leads Newt towards his distressed boyfriend like a beacon. A café built out of the back of an old buggie that is still standing by way of miracle or magick serves terribly cheap sludge they’ve made off as coffee. Newt can smell it from the edge of the fabric stall he pauses in front of, moth balls and pixie dust serving no aid to block the smell. A cup of it sits in front of Thomas, untouched.

A flimsy umbrella hangs over his head, unimpressively blocking the sun from beating down on him, who does his best to both hunch away from it, but not so much that he leans purposely closer to the creature seated in front of him. He is going to have a very red neck at the end of the day.

The creature seated before Thomas is of a species whose name escapes Newt, that resemble some andromorphic mix of human and elephant, or anteater. The long snout moves wildly around the table as he talks, telling him a story of his wife that grows exponentially as the minutes tick on by, in both sexual nature and detail. All that is visible of Thomas’ face are his eyes peeking through his fingers, brimming with horror. Without having to read his mind (Newt allows the thoughts to fade, a practiced ability that took years to master, when he felt himself staring to get a headache) Newt can tell exactly what thoughts are running rampant through Thomas’ head from the shift of colours in his eyes.

First there is a sharp yellow for surprise, then cloudy green for disgust, and then soft amber for embarrassment, and then back to green that shifts to an irritable orange here and there. A sadistic little nudge in the back of Newt’s mind thinks he is too cute like this – truly at a loss of words, horrified and uncomfortable but too polite to voice it, and choosing to suffer in silence. Newt, himself, would have walked away ten minutes ago, and Thomas would have rolled his eyes at him.

Oh, the ears are turning pink. Adorable.

Thomas finally stops the stranger right as he begins to describe all the glorious sex he and his wife used to have in the golden honeymoon days of their relationship.

“Okay, so the way that I see it,” Thomas says, “you have two options. The first is sit Kamilla down and have a talk with her, really get it all out, and the second is call it quits. Maybe not forever, but for now. It’s obvious you two might need some time apart to be in your own space.”

“You really think so?” the stranger asks, to which Thomas nods earnestly. “Wow, you Druid kinds are so wise, and stuff.”

“Well, thank you, I appreciate –”

“But can’t you just, you know, give me a, like, a potion or something to –”

Thomas bristles. “No, I can’t do that.”

“Okay, well then I’ve also got this boil on my back that won’t go away. You got some magick schtick that could just –?" 

With a sigh, Newt comes up behind the stranger and clamps a hand down on his shoulder hard enough that it startles his long nose up in the air. Thomas’ eyes widen and his mouth falls open. Newt wags his eyebrows, and says to the stranger, “Okay, mate, time’s up. Move along.”

After a moment of grumbling and complaints where the man does not move, where Newt is forced to finesse and Glamour himself to look a shade more intimidating than what is natural, and with a casual persuasion of, “I once drank one of his simple home brews and ended up on the toilet for a week. Trust me, you don’t want any potions from him,” he finally leaves. Newt takes his place seated opposite his red-faced boyfriend, eyes an angry orange.

“Hey, babe,” Newt says.

Thomas’ face, somehow, turns more red. “Are you kidding?”

“‘Thank you for coming to get me, Newt, I really appreciate it,’ Well of course, Tommy, you’re more than welcome!”

Thomas rolls his eyes.

Newt sighs. “I don’t know what you want me to say, Tommy. My sister’s a fucking idiot.”

At the mention of Sonya, Thomas takes a look around the bazaar, as if he’s expecting her to pop out from the silk and saturn stall in a flourish. “Where is she, anyway?”

“She’s busy with a new tyranny project,” Newt says. Thomas’ eyebrows shoot up to his hairline. “I’ll tell you about it later. We need to get going.”

“I had my Com in that buggie,” he says, miserably.

“It probably ran out of battery. That would explain the lack of transmission.” Newt stands, “Like I said, we need to go now, or Minho will skin both of our asses. You can yell at Sonya later. Full permission. Go ham. Now come on, darling, up you get.”

Thomas, in a very Thomas-like fashion, stubbornly curls his top lip and crosses his arms over his chest. Druid sigils and faerie runes peek out beneath the rolled cuff of his sleeves, the ink dark against tan skin, acquired over years at The Homestead. Most of them are Gally’s work and, loath as he is to admit it, they are quite good. They also work a treat. Newt himself has a handful trailing down the length of his spine.

“What if I want to stay here?”

Newt blinks. “Why would you want to stay here?”

Thomas shrugs and, pulling his cup of sludge closer to his chest as if he will actually drink it, says, “It’s not half bad. Warm.”

Newt blinks again, three times in concession. What is left of the Glamour he’d pulled over himself on Ogygia – the shinier hair and jawline a touch more chiselled than what nature bestowed upon him – fizzles to a crisp.

“Do you have to make everything so difficult?” Newt asks. “Get in the buggie, or we are going to be late for Gally’s fuckin’ surprise party.”

Now it is Thomas’ turn to blink. “Surprise party?”

“Yes,” Newt says, “In Sadeia with all its purply sea goodness. Now please will you get in the buggie?”

Thomas’ brow wrinkles. “Sadeia?”

Newt walks away with his hands up in the air. 

_

Leaving the buggie parked out in the sun without turning the air filter on before he left was a regretful oversight on Newt’s part, and he spends the better part of the twenty minutes he is forced to wait for Thomas to gets his ass on board profusely sweating, and playing red-light-green-light with his own consciousness.

When he feels able enough to straighten up out of the slump he’d landed in the driver’s seat in, Newt begins the arduous task of switching all the controls back on when he notices a light blinking in the corner field of his vision.

 _One New Message_ flashes on screen, along with Minho’s calling card.

Newt presses play instantly, and Minho’s idle drawl fills the small ship.

“Yeah, so listen,” his friend begins, “You’ll probably want to kill me for this and I accept that, but as I mentioned to you earlier, we’re on a tight fuckin’ schedule. And to be perfectly honest, dude, this is for your own good.”

“What is?” Newt asks the recording, as if he was expecting it to answer back. 

Minho continues, “You won’t want to bother coming back to the Glade because we’ve already left. Meet us on Sadeia and work your shit out with Thomas on the way there, okay? Talk it out or, hell, bang it out, I don’t really care. Oh, and you might also be running out of fuel by the time you’re listening to this, but I got you, man! Stop off at Du’lippe and restock, it’s not too far. I’ve sent you the flight path. Take a load off. Brenda’s got an old friend there and she’s already let him know you’re coming. Ask for Jorge. Take care and watch out for grievers. _Okayloveyoubye_.” 

Newt hits the console and swears just as Thomas lands in the seat opposite him, languidly casual, and asks Newt what’s wrong, because _of course_ he would have heard none of that. 

“We’ve been ditched,” Newt summarises, and starts up the engines.

_

Du’lippe is not quite a snowy, barren wasteland, but nearing it. On the off-season it resembled a snow globe lightly shaken, as apposed to the on-season where it is in full shake. Newt and Thomas are lucky enough to land on it in the off-off-season, where the snow globe is merely sitting on the mantle and minding its business, serenely unshaken.

If you need a clearer idea, it also looks like a bleak concept thought up by an author of a science fictional dystopia-noir novel that was abandoned mid-outline. Odd shaped grey buildings stand up on their own free will, not giving a single care of how ugly they are. Opposite the two men is a shack simply named _SHACK_ that sells miniature bottles and frying pans. It leans dramatically to the left as if caught in a heavy wind.

Thomas is complaining.

“This is how people get sick,” he says, hugging his arms to his chest. He’d fallen asleep beside Newt in the buggie and remained that way for the entire trip to Du’lippe. His eyes turned a stormy silver the moment the cool, placid air of the planet touched his skin. After coming off a desert plant this one is, apparently, not agreeable. 

“It’s not so bad,” Newt says. The fuel did not carry them all the way into the town district as expected, but gave out half way there, and dumped them in the middle of nowhere. After being instructed to wait for Brenda’s friend Jorge, who over the Com gave them a whole of two grunts and one word – one grunt after _Are you Jorge?_ and another after _We’re Brenda’s friends_. When Newt had asked where he wanted them to wait the man simply replied, “Bus stop,” and signed out. They shiver, as instructed, by the bus stop.

“I can’t Glamour myself a nice warm coat like you can.” 

Thomas is the only Druid Newt has ever met who has such a strong vendetta against his own magick. Thomas might not be able to Glamour himself a coat, but he could shrink the molecules around himself to create an invisible space heater, or draw from the core to keep himself warm. Maybe even manipulate some elements. Anything! A number of options springs to mind, but for whatever reason Thomas refused, preferring to stand and suffer than have to lift a finger and create even a spark of magick in his pinkie finger. 

The only way you could tell he had an ounce of magick in him at all is when his eyes change colour every time he experiences an emotion, or sometimes he will make a weed or a mushroom sprout between his fingers.

The magick reading on this planet is average to high – Newt is always sure the check upon landing anywhere – which is how he is able to Glamour himself a nice warm coat. The Glamoured coat is able to establish a warmth that, on any planet with a lower magick reading, would simply look pretty but be essentially useless.

“Yet another reason Mages are more superior,” Newt mumbles into the fuzzy grey collar.

Thomas makes a face, his eyes narrowing so that the grey is striking against the darkness of his eyelashes.

“Cute.”

“I am,” Newt says.

Thomas rolls his eyes. “And modest.”

“Oh, never.”

Thomas grins at the snow-covered trees across the road. His nose is pink when Newt leans in to press their shoulders together. “C’mere,” he says, holding one side of the coat open.

Thomas, as expected, turns his nose up at the offer. “Make believe warmth,” he sniffs, but leans in all the same.

“Feels real enough,” Newt says, sighing through his nose at the press of Thomas’ arm and hip against his chest, feeling his warmth flow into him, even without the jacket. Thomas is always warm to Newt. So warm. He wonders how he could ever feel cold. Newt turns his nose into Thomas’ hair and shuts his eyes. 

The old magick running potent through Thomas’ veins is ever present. Whether or not he chooses to use it is neither here nor there.

This is when a buggie slows to a stop in front of them, much smaller than Newt’s and a few decades older, with a stone-faced man behind the wheel. Goggles have been pushed up to the top of his head, the skin below it dark with soot, cutting out the shape of the goggles themselves. His hands remain on the steerer, weathered with age and hard labour, as if he is ready to take off in a moment if they didn’t make it inside in time.

Thomas clears his throat. “Uh. Jorge?”

The man smiles. This is somehow more intimidating that his frown.

“Stephen and Isaac?”

“Erm,” Newt murmurs, “No,” and a moment later thinks perhaps he should have just said yes.

Jorge shrugs, and with a click following a worrisome screech like old breaks the doors swing open, flapping to a still. “Never mind. Hop in. Brenda described to me what you looked like because she knew I wouldn’t be listening when she told me your names.” 

_

They get fuel.

Jorge, despite appearances, is surprisingly chatty, and talks at them for the entire ride into town. He asks about Brenda, mostly, and they learn this is actually where she grew up. Some about the ship, and a little about Thomas and Newt. By the time they arrive at the garage the tips of Thomas’ fingers are turning green, his eyes shifting to match, and Newt realises he has Glamoured himself a soft sheen over his skin, similar to the shimmery glow that Jorge has pulled over his face, like he has worked a hard but rewarding day’s labour. 

Jorge and his workers are welcoming and friendly, ushering them inside and milling about the buggie, shooting off questions to Newt that he only half understands and manages to answer. They are given lunch and a nice warm beverage, which they both appreciate. Upstairs, in Jorge’s study, Newt easily imagines a young Brenda growing up here, tinkering with all sorts of gadgets and equipment scattered about the large room in a collection of clutter items, learning the mechanics and magick of it all.

They decide to stay the night and rest up before catching up with the others tomorrow, and Jorge sends them in the direction of a decent motel.

It is a long, strangely shaped building that stands on one leg, and thickens out at the top into a rectangle, resembling an ice cream, somewhat, simply named _MOTEL_.

Newt has to appreciate how simple they keep things here.

A woman sits at the counter and smokes, reading a magazine, and she does not look up until Thomas rings the bell sitting on the bench beside her dramatic yellow heels.

“Welcome, boys,” she greets in a bored drawl. “How can I help you?”

“We’d like a room, please.”

“Sure thing. We certainly have plenty of those. You want singles or a double?”

The question is one that they have been asked many times, and are usually quick to answer, but their current situation gives Newt’s pause. He looks at Thomas, and finds that Thomas is also looking at him. His eyes search for something in Newt’s face for a handful of seconds before he turns back to the woman and answers, “The double is fine.” 

-

Newt dreams in vivid colour. Images mould themselves around bright waves of indigo and violet, and cool drops of blue and green. He dreams of memories, mostly, the clairvoyance that runs through his family stemming back centuries has not skipped him as it has done his sister, but in sleep he manages to evade it. When the voices began as a small whispering in the back of his mind and which very quickly turned to loud, obnoxious shouts that made his eyes burn and head pound, sleep was Newt’s only sanctuary away from it all.

Powers shift as you age, and as you learn to control and change them, but at the start there was always the fear that Newt’s abilities would penetrate the unconscious mind, and lead to prophetic visions. 

Luckily for him it did not.

Unluckily for him they aren’t all that innocent, either.

In the beginning there was Thomas. Now there is still Thomas. Time bends in space and also in the confines of Newt’s mind – there is Thomas, the skinny sixteen-year-old boy who hunched in the middle of Alby’s foyer with a backpack slung over his shoulder, a sister excitedly swinging on her heels at his elbow, and eyes the colour of an ancient pine. Newt was able to feel what they were from the moment they stepped out of Alby’s buggie, but Thomas was stronger. Always stronger. A deep earthy umber weaved in fire flowed beneath his skin and attracted everyone in the house to him like moths to a flame. Their _thoughts_ alone drove Newt to near madness for months; exasperation and then, eventually, jealousy.

It is then, and it is later on: the look on Thomas’ face when he pulled away after kissing Newt for the first time. The spark of panic in his eyes, darkening to a fearful grey when he thought he had ruined everything, and the way they warmed up to a rich chocolate brown when Newt kissed him back.

That colour is still Newt’s favourite. 

A stirring in the waking world brings Newt back to the surface. The bed is warm but Thomas’ skin is warmer, and his hair smells like sage and evergreen, as usual, no matter what he puts in it. His skin is soft and his lips are sweet when he shuffles forward in Newt’s arms – they seemed to find themselves tight around Thomas in the middle of the night, like they always do – and kisses him soundly.

They remain that way until the hawks outside the window begin to caw, when Newt’s knee is between Thomas’ thighs and Thomas’ hands have slipped under his shirt, gently tugging at the fine hairs above his navel.

“What time is it?” Thomas asks, brushing his nose against Newt’s.

Newt sighs. “Time to get up,” he says.

A small noise of protest makes its way up from Thomas’ throat, and he says, “We could stay here a little longer.” 

_Yes, I agree_ , a voice in the back of Newt’s mind whispers, _Brilliant idea._ The voices are more present in the morning, when Newt is languid and hasn’t had a chance to put a lid on them yet, which gives him a very clear idea of what Thomas has in mind for the next couple of hours. 

But, when Thomas’ hands move to Newt’s hips, and his finds himself whining and pulling away. 

“We should get ready to go,” he says, “We’re –”

“On a tight fuckin’ schedule, yeah,” Thomas says, imitating Minho’s voice to the best of his ability, which is actually quite good. Newt grins into the mattress when Thomas sighs with an air of the dramatic, and flops on his back, arms and legs spread out like a starfish.

“Do you want to shower first, or should I go?” Thomas asks the ceiling.

Newt pauses after pulling his sweater over his head, messing up his hair even more. “Uh. You can go.”

Thomas hums, and with a groan pulls himself from the bed. “Good idea. You always take too long, anyway.”

Newt tosses a pillow at him, which he dodges, cackling. “I do not!”

“Yeah, no, I know. Beauty takes time, you don’t have to tell me.”

The door clicks shut before Newt can ask in there’s room enough in there for two.

_

This goldilocks star system is quiet, tranquil, and evanescent, and ruined by the rumbling of Thomas’ stomach. Newt puts the buggie into auto and reaches for his Com.

“Hungry?”

“Yeah,” Thomas says.

“Lunch?” Newt asks, “We can order in.”

After scrolling for a good ten minutes, both slumped in their seats, Newt finds a total of zero delivery options that are willing to come out to their current destination. Whether it is because they are too far out in the middle of nowhere, or something to do with the star system itself, but suddenly Newt remembers Minho’s warning about watching out for grievers, and feels uneasy about staying there for any longer.

He tosses the Com on to the dash and kicks the gear back into flight. Thomas, absently toying with a tiny sprout between his thumb and forefinger, lost in a daydream, startles back awake.

“I’m thinking we dine out instead,” Newt says, and locks the co-ordinates for the closest planet.

_

Baumal is a quaint little exoplanet dancing on the edge of a smaller galaxy with a total of five planets circling a red sun. Desert cuts the planet in half, with a sister ocean that occupies the other 50%. Sandy shores and sloping hills gradually melt away to reveal a modest silver city that glimmers like diamonds, and the contrast between the dusty pink sand and turquoise sky paints a striking image.

However.

“Magick reading?” Thomas asks.

“Lower than desirable.” Newt says, watching the numbers fall on his Com. “Let’s make this quick.” 

It feels strange not being able to Glamour himself to fit in, even instinctively, he doesn’t have the energy. Although, walking through the main city district after leaving the buggie at the dock, Newt isn’t so sure he would want to fit in, anyway.

A woman in a fluorescent pink bubble dress greets them at the gate, her hair swooped up towards the sky in three tiers. Her lipstick and eye makeup both match the colour of the dress. The population appears to be made up primarily of humans, each of them dressed in similar bright colours of outrageous clothing. Astronaut helmets seem to be in fashion.

“Welcome to Beumal!” the woman chirps happily, handing both Newt and Thomas maps of the city. They thank her politely and leave.

“Again,” Newt says, “Lets make this quick.”

“Agreed,” Thomas says.

A blue and white diner is their pick of the day, and Newt finds himself drifting when looking over the menu. Low magick levels always mean low energy. On the opposite of the booth, Thomas is yawning.

Newt lightly kicks his ankle under the table. “Look,” he says, “They have chocolate Sundays.”

“You hate chocolate,” Thomas says, instantly.

“I meant for you.”

Thomas frowns at the table. “Oh.”

“Tommy?” He reaches over the table and places his hand over Thomas’. “Everything alright?”

Thomas’ eyes are dancing between three shades of grey and blue when he looks at Newt. Finally, with a sigh, he leans back against the plush vinal and asks, “What’s going on with us? And don’t say ‘what do you mean’ because I know you know what I mean.”

Newt sets the menu down and touches two fingers to each temple. “Is this really the best place to be having this conversation?”

“Why not?”

“I just –”

“If you give me the ‘it’s not you, it’s me’ talk, I swear –”

“You’ve just been pulling away.”

“ _I’m_ pulling away?” 

“And now you’re getting angry.”

“Actually,” Thomas says, “I’m always a little angry. And you’re always a little bit of a dick. That’s us. That’s how we work.”

“Well maybe we don’t –” Newt cuts himself off.

“Maybe we don’t what?” Thomas asks. “Newt …”

“I just mean.” He groans, rubbing his eyes. “Druids and Mages have been at each other’s throats since the dawn of time, Tommy. Maybe that’s us. Maybe it’s in our blood.”

The phrase shocks Thomas, and he leans back in the booth as if the words had visibly struck. After a moment, he says, “That’s complete hypnos shit,” and stands.

A spike of panic stabs Newt in the throat. “Where are you going?” he asks.

“To take a walk around the city. The pamphlet says the fountain in town square looks iridescently splendid at noon.”

“Aren’t you going to eat anything?”

“Lost my appetite.” 

Thomas leaves the diner. The ringing of the bell above the door is loud in Newt’s ears. He groans, and lays his head in his arms on the table.

After twenty minutes of driving himself mad (the wards bend and he picks up the person on the opposite end of the room singing the tune of an infomercial inside his head over and over) and sending away three waitresses who try and take his order, Newt decides to call his sister.

“Yellow?” She answers, because she heard it in an old movie one time and thinks it’s funny. It makes Newt laugh, usually, but not today.

“If it isn’t the high priestess herself,” he says, “I am honoured you answered my call.”

“Oh _hush_ , you,” she hisses, “It’s the middle of the night, what do you want?”

“I’m sorry. Is it a bad time?”

“ _Noooo_ ,” she draws out, and in the background, Newt hears a click of a door sliding shut. “What’s going on?”

“I don’t know what’s wrong with me, Sonya,” Newt says.

Sonya hums. “Well, many things, but please elaborate. I’m guessing this is about Thomas?”

Newt takes a moment to consider he fact that he is in public and does not allow his face to fall smack into the table, like he wants it to.

“Yes,” he answers, miserably.

Sonya sighs. “Okay. Maybe you two just need a minute. Go get drunk with Ben, I’m sure he could use a more positive influence than Gally – what?”

Newt frowns. “What what?”

“You made a noise.”

“No, I didn’t.”

“You _absolutely_ made a noise, it was like a – like a _hnnh_ noise. What was that? Is it worse than I thought? Do I need to call Thomas and give him a piece of my mind? Because I will. I’ve even got Harriet on standby.”

In the background, fainter, Harriet’s pleasant voice: “Hey, Newt. Love you. I totally will –” A yawn. “Ah. Sorry. Totally will kick his scrawny ass for you.”

“Will both of you shut up?” Newt snaps. The woman sitting in the booth opposite him looks up and glares over her small, half moon glasses. Newt smiles back. “I’m sorry. I appreciate that, but we aren’t with the others, okay? We’re on Baumal. They all ditched us, and we’re supposed to be meeting them on Sadeia but, to be quite honest, I’m starting to doubt we’ll even make it there.”

Sonya swears, and Harriet grumbles something about ripping Minho a new one. “Where’s Baumal? Doesn’t matter. Where’s Thomas?”

“He walked off somewhere.”

It’s quiet, but Newt still catches the cut-off wince in Sonya’s throat. “That’s fine. Like I said before, it sounds like both of you need some space. Take a breather, and then afterwards just talk to him, okay? That’s all I can say. Be honest with each other.”

“But that’s what I’m –”

“ _Worried about_ ,” Sonya finishes, “Yeah. I know. You’re worried you’ll say something dumb, or something you regret. Or maybe you already have, and that’s why you’re talking to me right now and not making out with your boyfriend in front of some weird statue. But, Newt. Seriously. Cut the hypnos shit and talk with him!” She repeats, “That’s all I can say.”

“Sonya?”

“Yeah?”

Newt slides a hand into his hair and sighs deep. “I think I might have already fucked it all up.”

The midday sun paints the city in an authentic iridescent glow that should be overwhelming, but isn’t. Newt finds Thomas sitting cross-legged on the lip of a fountain, creating sparks from his fingertips for a giggling little girl when her mother isn’t looking. He stops when the woman turns to check out what it is that’s making her child laugh so much, which of course only makes her laugh harder. Eventually they leave, and the two – Thomas and the little girl – wave goodbye.

“That was sweet,” Newt says, coming to sit beside Thomas, who doesn’t start at Newt’s sudden appearance, but doesn’t look like he was expecting him, either. “Your abilities can be amazing, Tommy, you just need to let them.”

“We aren’t starting this again,” Thomas says, and – _hell_ no. That very argument is what started this whole thing between them in the first place, two weeks ago. Two weeks? One? Three? Newt has lost track.

“No,” Newt says, “We’re not. Tommy?”

“Yes?”

“Can you look at me?”

Thomas does. After a sigh, and a single contemplative look at the horizon, he does. “I’m sorry about what I said back at the diner. I have been pulling away, it’s true, and it wasn’t fair to push it all on to you.”

“Newt, I …” Thomas groans. Pressing his thumbs into the centre of his forehead, he says, “I’ve been a bit of an asshole, too. I was angry at the thought that you were angry with me, and I was too stubborn to admit that, but mostly I was angry about that fact that you were right. I prefer not to use my magick because it’s easier that way. It’s safer. I just keep thinking what if I can’t control any of it, and what if I lose control again like – like how it was before Alby, and I hurt you, or anyone else.”

Thomas went to Alby’s school to learn control, just like all of them, but instead he walked out having mastered suppression.

“God. He’d fuckin’ kill me if he saw me now.”

“He’d kill the both of us,” Newt says, imagining Alby’s furious scowl in his mind’s eye, “Smash both our heads together. I can hear him now. _Maybe that’ll knock somethin’ loose, ya good for nothing shanks!_ ” 

Thomas laughs so hard he snorts, which in turn makes Newt laugh so hard he loses his breath, and that leaves the two of them laughing like a couple of wild galepikes on the edge of the fountain, the water spurting up high into the sky behind them.

“I brought you something,” Newt says, when they finally manage to catch their breath, wiping tears from the corner of his eyes.

“What is it?” Thomas asks, cheeks pink, and Newt pulls out the take away box from behind his back, containing a slice of the most heart-attack inducing, sugary mass of chocolate that Newt has ever seen in his life. Thomas, of course, lights up at the sight of it so much that his eyes turn that beautiful, warm brown to match the caramel swirls in the icing.

“ _Oh!_ ” he gasps.

“I know you said you weren’t hungry, but …”

“Thank you, Newt,” Thomas says, or Newt supposes that’s what he probably said, with a mouthful of cake turning the words to goblin paste.

Afterwards, when he kisses Thomas and tastes the chocolate lingering in the corner of his mouth, he supposes a little bit of sugar isn’t bad.

“We really should, like,” Thomas starts, mouth full again, “eat proper food.”

“Maybe,” Newt agrees. “In a little. It’s nice here.”

A soft breeze blows in and around the square, and for a moment Newt thinks it smells faintly of lavender and orange blossom. He feels the magick beneath his bones spark.

Thomas kisses him again. “It is.”

_

The buggie had been parked in the hangar bay of Sadeia for a total of forty-five minutes before Newt began to feel that the employees working in the dock were starting to get a little annoyed with them. Also, the buggie’s internal Com has rang, like, three times. Newt sees it beeping out of the corner of his eye, and eventually it may before annoying, but currently …

Currently he has Thomas’ head on his chest, the ends of his brown hair tickling his skin. Newt counts the freckles on Thomas’ back and imagines constellations when Thomas shifts so that his chin is resting on Newt’s sternum, and he’s staring up at him with rich brown eyes.

“What time is it?”

Newt hums, flicking his wrist so that the time flashes above their heads in faint blue sparks. Thomas mumbles _Show off_ into Newt’s skin. 

“Almost noon.”

“Shit,” Thomas says, “When was the last time we actually slept?”

Du’lippe. Which was who-knows ago. They’ve jumped through so many time zones on so many planets Newt has pretty much lost all sense of reality.

“I could go for a nap,” He says.

Thomas grins, then kisses him. “Me too.”

They sleep.

-

“The prodigal sons return!”

In one hand Minho holds a colourful pina colada, and in the other a camera which he uses to snap a photo of Thomas and Newt right as they come through the entrance of the plaza. A white shirt with colourful flowers hangs loosely from his shoulders, and he is wearing flip flops. Newt has known Minho for almost ten years, and not once has he ever seen him wear flip flops.

He wonders if, somewhere along the journey, they flew through a black hole and were spat out into some parallel universe. 

“No thanks to _you_ ,” Newt says just as Thomas squarks, “I was _ditched!_ ” and Minho is throwing his arms around both of them, his warmed kissed skin smelling of sunscreen.

He declares, “Good, it builds character. No need to thank me at once, you can save that for the wedding speeches.”

Thomas raises an eyebrow and stops pulling at the sleeve of his shirt, where some of Minho’s drink has spilled on to it. “Ours or yours?”

Minho laughs as Newt chokes on air, his cheeks burning.

“So where are the purple lakes?”

“We’re saving that for tonight,” Minho explains. “Sonya and Harriet aren’t even here yet.”

“I’m sure they’ll stroll in once my sister’s finished her reign of terror.”

Minho asks, “Another one?”

Newt has never been to Sadeia before, but has heard of its beauty whispered across multiple galaxies. None of those whispers were exaggerating at all and, if anything, down plaid it. The city square bustles with a happy mixture of tourists and locals – the locals being seven-foot-tall beings with silvery skin and long pointy ears that move and twitch as they talk. Buildings made from sandstone stretch high above their heads, and iron wood balconies protrude outwards in a brickwork pattern. Almost every inch of it is covered in ivy and orange flowers that warm the area and give the illusion of constant sunset.

Then, of course, there are the purple oceans. Unseen to them now, but Newt knows they lie just beyond the walls of the city, waiting patiently in their ethereal beauty.

The magick reading is also off the charts. It is so high that all the breath was knocked out of Newt’s lungs the moment they stepped out of the hangar bay and simultaneously filled them with the sweetest air he has ever tasted. His skin began to tingle and a soft yellow glow surrounded him for a moment, and Newt finally understood why Sonya’s nickname for him when they were teenagers was Yellow Iris 11-0622. Beside him, Thomas gasped and his eyes flashed a spectrum of colours. For a good five minutes moss grew beneath his feet everywhere he walked.

This world, also, has Chuck.

Thomas sees his little brother ordering a gelato from a stall and instantly flares up.

“Are you kidding me – ?”

Like a pair of garden variety faeries, Aris and Rachel appear in front of them, blocking his access. They’re sipping slurpees and are dressed in some combination of touristy merchandise, Rachel with a shirt like Minho’s and a band of flowers pulled up to tame her wild black hair, and Aris with a crown of orange flowers.

“Hey, guys,” Aris greets.

Newt waves, eyes flicking back and forth between them, Chuck in the background, Thomas’ ear steam, and the rest of their friends gathered by a table overlooking the cliffs below. Brenda is leaning over the table and ceremoniously placing an atrocious balloon hat on Gally’s head. Minho, seated in his lap, finds this absolutely hilarious, as do the rest of their friends. Newt feels a pang in his chest at the sound of their boisterous laughter filling the square, carried by the wind, and he realises how much he’s missed all of them. 

Rachel looks back at Chuck and then at Thomas, and says, nonchalantly, “It’s cool. We’re chaperoning.” 

Thomas says, “He’s meant to be at school.” 

Aris frowns, “He told us they were on break.”

“And you believed that?”

They both just shrug. 

Thomas makes a noise of frustration and stalks off towards his brother.

The two look at Newt, shocked, who explains, “He runs away from school a lot.”

Nodding awkwardly, they leave to go join the others, and Newt watches as up ahead Chuck has noticed his older brother is here, and they two have begun to argue. Newt takes a seat at an empty table and watches. He is considering ordering a drink when a woman comes and sits beside him. Her long white hair is braided to the side and she is draped in every kind of beaded shawl imaginable. In her hands she holds a deck of oracle cards. 

“May I?” She asks in a voice that feels both authoritative and wispy, and by the time Newt begins to decline she has already spread out a velvet cloth, and is shuffling the cards.

“I don’t have any money on me,” he tries, but she has already placed three cards in front of him.

She says, “Choose one that speaks out to you.”

“Really, I –”

“You are a Mage, no? Then you should already know how this works. Pick one. Quickly now.”

Newt sighs, and wonders how he always gets jumped by the spiritual weirdos. He should get some sort of pardon for having to live with one his whole life.

The card he chooses is the one with the slight dent in the corner, on the far left.

“The Dandelion,” she announces, turning it over with a small hum, “Interesting. You have a love that scares you. You have never felt this way before about anyone, and that is frightening. You worry about this a lot, and it sometimes clouds your intuition.”

Newt stares dubiously at the picture of a dandelion string up at him, vibrant and golden under a smiling sun, edged in gold, and wonders how she possibly came to that conclusion. 

“The cards told you all that, did they?” 

“No,” she says, with a cryptic smile, and begins packing away her deck, “My advice to you, young man, is don’t focus so much on the past, and look more to the present and future.” 

Newt looks over at Thomas again. It appears he is done arguing with Chuck, who has gone back to carelessly eating his ice cream, and throws his hands up in the air when he notices Newt is watching, giving a hopeless smile. A big, toothy one that says, _Can you believe that?_ and Newt feels a fuzzy sensation rise in the pit of his stomach. 

What will he do next? He was going to kiss the living daylights out of his boyfriend.

When he turns back around the woman has disappeared. The chair is pushed in, showing no sign that she was ever there.

“Guess she really didn’t want any money,” Newt says, just as Teresa sneaks up behind him and ruffles his hair.

“Are you talking to yourself?” She asks, taking a seat.

“No, to my three imaginary friends. What happened to your hair?”

He asks because a good 60% of it is gone. Previous flowing black waves end just above her shoulders, the ends dipped in blue. It is cut in a stylish swooping angle, but something tells Newt it wasn’t intentional.

“Um, well,” Teresa starts, lucking a lock behind her ear, “I finished my book.”

“But?”

“But there was a minor mishap at the end,” she says, “You might not want to go to the eastern wing of the Glade for a while.”

Newt laughs. “Noted.”

A scraping sound grows louder and louder behind them until a chair is dropped in the empty spot at the table and Thomas sits with a huff. Newt raises an eyebrow, and Thomas says, “He’s not going back to school.”

Teresa nods. “I know. He’s finally going to use all the extra credit he has stacked up to graduate early.”

“Yeah, he said, but –”

“And then he’s going to come live with me and Brenda for a while,” Teresa finishes. Thomas is not drinking anything, but if he was he would have choked on it. They talk on top of each other, words mixing and nonsensical, but in the end Teresa is louder: “We’ve already talked about it, and it’s fine, Tom, he wants to!” 

“I know he _wants to_ –” 

“You and Brenda are moving in together?” Newt asks, sitting up in his seat, “When? Where?”

Teresa shrugs, “I don’t know. Soon. And maybe here, but that will depend on the market, of course. We’ll also need to take a guest room into account, for Chuck and then later when he moves out.” Teresa shakes her head. The blue highlights in her hair pulse. “It’s going to be a lot to work out, but we’re excited.”

Thomas is frowning. “Why does that sound like you’re dating?”

Teresa blinks. The penny drops.

“Wait, you’re _dating?_ ” Thomas gasps. 

And it begins again. Newt opts to leave them to it and gets up without another word. Half way to the table where the rest of the crew of the Glade sits, a news article catches his eye. It’s the kind that is printed on paper to look ancient and match the aesthetic of the city, and it reads that an alert has been issued for someone calling themselves Elizabeth of Avalon, and that everyone is to keep a look out. A number is listed for anyone who has seen or heard of this woman, and Newt is dialling his sister in an instant.

She answers, “Yellow?” as usual, vaguely out of breath.

“Hey, Liz, the gig’s up.”

Sonya clicks her tongue. “I _know_ , Newt.” 

What sounds like pistols go off in the background, and Newt asks, “Are you being shot at right now?”

“Yup,” Sonya says, popping the _P_ , “Turns out these little guys have more in ‘em than I thought. Good for them, though. I’m actually really proud right now.”

“Sonya,” Newt says, “They are trying to kill you.”

She makes a wavering noise. “Yeah, but you know. Still –” Her voice moves away from the receiver, “Oh hey, babe? Can you pass me my bag over there? No, the purple one. With the gunpowder tea. Yeah. Thanks – Watch out!”

More firing. Some shouts. What sounds like Harriet kicking someone in the head.

“Wow,” Sonya sighs, “She’s so beautiful. Okay, I’ve gotta go now. Catch you soon!”

The line cuts out. Newt sighs, slipping his Com in his pocket. Well, at least she has everything under control. 

-

The purple seas of Sadeia are, in fact, very purple and simply breathtaking. Together they manage to find a spot on the beach to spread out, and by night fall a camp fire is lit, Minho casting a spell on it so it would 1. Keep going without interruption, and 2. Change colour every hour. Music plays out of a pot curtesy of Ben’s spell work, and Aris and Rachel combined their talents and built little seats out of driftwood for everyone to sit.

In the early hours of the morning everyone begins to file out, Minho and Gally first, disappearing back to the Glade somehow without alerting any of them. Newt and Thomas take a walk further down the beach and find a small outdoor theatre where an old movie plays on a giant projector, facing a cluster of miss-matched love seats and arm chairs. It is mostly empty at this hour, so finding a couch to themselves is not difficult. Thomas orders popcorn and tips the very sleepy usher who brings it to them a little extra, and half way through the box Newt points at the actor on screen and says, “He looks like you.”

The movie, of what Newt has managed to grasp of it, seems to be a about a group of people forced to work together to create a primitive app on their primitive Coms. The one who shares a resemblance with Thomas is squinting up from his Com on a sports field, and is promptly hit in the head with a ball. The couple next to them laughs, and Newt can’t help but think they look a little familiar as well.

Thomas squints at the screen, thinking it over before deciding, “I’m much better looking.” He tosses a piece of popcorn at his mouth, and misses.

Newt agrees. 

The movie is almost over when Thomas, leaning against Newt’s chest, his feet up on the seat, jerks, and they almost lose the remaining popcorn.

“Newt,” he whispers, “Newt is him. The guy from Ciuphus. With the trunk.”

Newt looks over in the darkness and _oh_ , fuck, yes it is. “Looks like he and his wife made up,” he says, watching the two lock trunks and giggle. Thomas makes a face up at him. Newt leans down and plants a kiss on the tip of his nose.

“Race you back to the beach?” he asks.

Thomas grins up at him, eyes swimming mischievously. “Get ready to eat my dust.”

He takes off, and so does Newt, running after him. When Newt catches Thomas eventually – which he will, of course – he doesn’t plan on ever letting go.

**Author's Note:**

> kisses!!


End file.
